Monday, August 29, 2005

Reasons #1, 2, and 3 Why I Will Never Have a Dog!!

Boy #2 is desperate for a dog. Unfortunately, he is unlucky enough to have a mother who, how shall I put this delicately....sort of, a little bit, kinda doesn't really (but I'm a nice person anyway) want dogs.

How is it possible that on the same day last week I heard two stories that reminded me why I will never have a dog? One friend told me about how she was sitting on the couch with her dog and he not only had a seizure but then threw up. Another friend called me that same night frantic because her 2 dogs had just come from the backyard (one with a live baby rabbit in his mouth) and smelled awful. It didn't smell like skunk, she said, but more like gas--it was foul. She was on the way to the emergency vet with them, with both her kids, (because of course her husband had a business dinner downtown!), giving me a running commentary the whole way there. When she got there they met her in the parking lot and uttered the words no dog owner wants to hear. "It's skunk. Take them home." She disagreed. "It's skunk," they said, as they handed her a recipe for a homemade deskunking concoction. It's 2005 and dog-owners still have to whip up potions involving hydrogen peroxide and baking soda to deskunk their dogs! I wondered, can this same concoction be used on the kids? What about the interior of her car? But I digress.

So now it was over to Dominick's for my friend, with dogs and kids in tow. Nothing like making an entrance at the grocery store at 10 at night smelling like eau de skunk. She assembled all the necessary ingredients as she and her kids made a lasting and indelible impression on everyone doing a little late-night shopping. The cashier looked at her sympathetically as she put the items on the conveyer belt. "Your dog got skunked, right?" she asked. I guess the secret potion is not a secret to everyone. It must be kind of like having membership in a club that no one wants to join.

She went home and started a long night of cleaning. First the dogs, then the kids, then the floor of the laundry room where she did the dog-cleaning. Finally, finally, it was her turn sometime late in the night. I bet a shower never felt so good!

Then, the next morning, just as I was remembering the skunk story from the night before that I was trying to forget, the first friend called me at 8 AM asking me to give her son a ride to the middle school for the 9AM ice cream social and locker set-up session. It turns out she had been up since 4 AM cleaning up after the dog who had a seizure. My friend woke up in the middle of the night smelling something horrible. When she went out into the hall she found doggy diarrhea and blood all over the floor. So she and Pine-Sol spent a bit of time in the wee hours of the morning cleaning her wood floors.